


The Chamber of Secrets

by Yatorihell



Series: In The Darkness [21]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, ノラガミ | Noragami
Genre: Multi, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-21 08:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12453561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatorihell/pseuds/Yatorihell
Summary: As the situation surrounding the Heir of Slytherin and the monster which is claiming more victims, Yato acts desperately to find the Chamber of Secrets, with dire consequences.Thank you to Ina (leopah) for being my right-hand man, screaming all the way through beta-ing, and for giving me bad ideas to make this even worse.





	The Chamber of Secrets

Yukine became more elusive than the ghosts of the castle after the night in the dungeon. Though Yato regretted it, he didn’t understand why Yukine reacted so. Slytherin dorms weren’t that bad.

Nevertheless, Yukine avoided Yato completely, leaving him alone in a school of people who distrusted him. Even Bishamon gave him wary glances, not convinced of his innocence despite knowing of his friendship with Hiyori, who remained in a death-like state.

He visited her every day, usually in the free hour he had at the end of each day before curfew, and today was no different. Even if Hiyori didn’t know he was there, it still felt wrong to just leave her for weeks on end when the Mandrake draught was still being procured to revive her and the other students.

Yato sighed. On top of the distrust surrounding Yato and without Hiyori to keep the peace, Yukine was all but a stranger to him now. With no idea of how to keep him on his side, Yato would have no choice but to find the Chamber by himself – a risk Hiyori had already taken while investigating the library.

Unlike her outstretched arm, her left hand was slightly open by her side. Yato sighed again and without thinking, hooked the tips of his fingers with hers and gently stroked the cool skin on the back of her hand with his thumb. They'd layered extra blankets on top of her frozen body in an attempt to keep her warm despite the fact that she appeared devoid of any feeling in this state.

“What would you do?” Yato asked her. After weeks of one-sided chat between the two, Yato had given up on waiting for answers – voicing his questions were easier if he could imagine the reply. 

Something rough brushed his fingertips as his hand shifted in hers. He tilted his head and moved his fingers once more, catching the thing she was holding and pulling it out.

A folded piece of parchment landed in Yato’s palm when he held his hand out, but once unfolded he could see that the elegant black writing on it was more like a page torn from a book, one that must’ve been faded with age judging by the ripped edges and yellow parchment. Yato turned the paper so it was upright, squinting at the cursive writing.

 _Did she actually find something about the Chamber?_ Yato thought to himself as he began to mutter the words aloud.

“ _Of all the many deadly beasts that roam our lands, no other is deadlier than the Basilisk_ ,” Yato murmured, “ _Capable of living for hundreds of years, instant death awaits any who meets this giant serpent’s eye…_ ”

Yato looked at Hiyori incredulously. How the hell did she find this? She’d discovered something much older and detailed than anything he had – even distinguishing the beast that roamed the Chamber of Secrets.

_But they didn’t die…._

Yato questioned the information and the fates of Suzuha and Hiyori before turning his attention back to the parchment. Jotted next to the passage in a different handwriting, which he was sure was Hiyori’s, was the word “reflection.”

He frowned at the word, piecing it together. He’d heard that Suzuha had been found in an outside corridor, and it had rained that night…perhaps he’d seen the Basilisk’s reflection in one?

Which meant that Hiyori had seen it reflected somewhere….

He glanced at her again before his eyes drifted to the table, focusing on the same hand mirror they'd found next to her Petrified body. He picked it up and mimicked Hiyori’s position, finding it sat snugly in his hand the same way it must’ve fit in Hiyori’s.

She wasn’t reaching out, Yato realised, she was holding this….

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathed, “you’re a _genius_!”

If she had noted down what she knew, then she could alert everyone even if she were to be petrified – she knew how to survive it, after all. It looked like her risk had paid off.

Yato dropped the mirror onto the bed and eagerly scanned the rest of the page. At the bottom, messily scrawled next to the neat calligraphy – no doubt Hiyori’s doing when she found more information about the Chamber and its contents – was a note.

“‘ _Pipes’_?” Yato echoed in confusion. What did plumbing have to do with this? After a final scan of the page he found a barely legible note, perhaps because of Hiyori’s hurry to get home before she was missed.

“ _Spiders flee before it_.”

The words lingered on his tongue for a moment before it all clicked into place. Nora’s warning about spiders. Now he knew why. If spiders fled before it, then he would have to go in the direction they fled from.

Then he only had one more task.

To find the Chamber of Secrets.

 

~

 

Yato barrelled out of the Hospital Wing, ignoring the fact that he’d missed curfew in his discovery of how to find the Chamber of Secrets, not even noticing the unusually bright hallway to the dungeon stairs and low voices, until he nearly ran straight into the fray.

He stopped short and pressed against the wall, keeping his panted breathing short and quiet as he listened to the conversation through the blood rushing to his ears. It soon drained from his hearing as well as his face when he peeked around the corner to see what the communion of teachers had gathered to witness.

Like the first time the Heir struck, bloody writing dripped from the wall, impossibly high for anyone to reach unless they were some sort of giant. This time only one phrase was written – not a warning, but a declaration.

_His skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever._

 

~

 

Yato abandoned any common sense he had. Someone was now held captive by the Heir, and whatever they were planning, it wasn’t good. Whatever it was, he had to act. Now.

The first place he went to was the library corridor where Hiyori had been found a few weeks before, searching for any sign of spiders that might show him where he should go. Nothing.

He stayed close to the walls on the way to his next destination, ears pricked for any shifting of scales on stone that would tell him the Basilisk was near, as well as listening for anyone who could be patrolling the castle.

It was pitch-black by the time he reached the Transfiguration Corridor, lit up by only a few torches which marked the spot where Suzuha had been found. Yato scoured the floor, then the cracks in the walls, hoping a spider might pop out and give him a clue of where exactly he should go.

Only when he tuned back into the sounds around him did he notice a small yet distinct sound of something weighted and _alive_ passing by him, despite it only being him in the hallway. Yato froze and locked his eyes to the ground, too cautious to look up unless the Basilisk was willing him to catch its eye.

Nevertheless, the slithering continued like the beast wasn’t even aware of his presence - yet it was close enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck. _Why wasn’t it stopping?_ Yato reached out a hand, flinching when it connected with stone rather than scales.

Very slowly he shuffled closer and pressed his ear to the wall, listening as carefully as he could through his racing pulse. The methodical shuffling was still there, right in his ear, but it was behind the wall.

 _Pipes…_ Hiyori’s message clicked into place. It was using the plumbing. That’s why no one had found the Basilisk.

Yato’s surprise was short-lived when he heard a rasping voice like metal grating on stone, speaking in a tongue only he could understand.

_Cull the Mudbloods._

His blood ran cold as the sounds of movement grew fainter, the length of the Basilisk’s body now passing by Yato, who stared at the wall in alarm before snapping back to his task.

Yato’s hands ran lightly along the wall and his ear pressed close to the wall which hid the maze of tunnels, trying to discern where the Basilisk was heading. Soundless feet took him up the staircase and through an abandoned hallway into a part of the school he didn’t know existed until the trail he was following died. The hisses and scaly scuffling he had followed grew distanced, as if the creature had taken a turn somewhere and vanished into another passageway.

Yato stood there for a moment, willing himself to hear something, anything, but only silence filled the air. He stepped away from the wall, looking around his surroundings properly for the first time.

It was only the first floor, but it looked like a dungeon chamber rather than a place where student would take classes. It was barely lit; the only torch that shed some light on his pathway had burned low in its holder and pierced the darkness around it to show a door much bigger than any others Yato could make out in the hallway.

The metal latch clacked loudly when Yato tentatively pulled it upward and cracked open the door. A bathroom – empty, of course – in such a state of disrepair that no student would want to use it unless absolutely necessary. 

Cubicles without doors and smashed porcelain reminded him of the time he and Hiyori had faced the troll, but this bathroom had one impressive feature that theirs did not, and it seemed to be the only thing left intact in the whole room.

A towering washbasin, carved from what seemed to be a solid block of stone and inlaid with porcelain sinks, filled the centre of the room. Taps rusted with age and neglect circled around the pillar though they looked like they had been dry since the day the bathroom was abandoned.

Yato twisted a faucet experimentally and no water came out. He turned it as far right and then as far left as he could. Still nothing.

He tilted his head to the side as he crouched down to examine it, wondering if it was actually a working sink, when his eye was caught by a discreet carving on the worn silver. Nearly obscured by rust but just about visible was a twisted, animal-like shape. The sigil of Slytherin. A serpent.

A change in the sound of his echoing footsteps caused Yato to look down. The hollow sound was now a series of metallic clangs; he stopped abruptly. Metal grates surrounded the washbasin. Pitch blackness underneath them told him there was nothing down there except…sewers.

The silence became very pronounced in the room as the gears clicked into place in Yato’s head. The Basilisk – which he thankfully couldn’t hear any more – must’ve come from here. Which in turn meant that the Chamber of Secrets was right under his feet, and the Heir – and whoever they had hostage – was there too.

Yato took a few steps back, inspecting the structure and pacing around it, searching for a chink in its armour that would tell him what he should do. The taps he turned and the stones he pressed yielded no results, not even the serpent engravement he fiddled with was a button that would reveal the passage to the Chamber.

Yato cursed under his breath, ideas depleting faster than he could come up with them. The only thing left to try was…

“ _Abna_ ,” Yato hissed.

Even if he were speaking to an inanimate structure rather than a living creature, parseltongue was his last resort. The Heir would have to be a parselmouth to control the Basilisk, so why wouldn’t the Chamber also need to be opened with parseltongue? 

A groaning as old as the castle itself filled the bathroom and Yato stumbled back from the noise. The wash basin separated, grinding outward with its pillared core rising and suspending mid-air. The section of basin which held the snake tap lowered into the ground in front of him before the metal grate slid back over, leaving a gaping chasm in the centre that had previously been hidden by the false sink.

Yato cautiously stepped forward, peering over the edge of the pit, finding no end in sight as it vanished into blackness. Gut instinct told him that this was the only way to the Chamber, and it looked like there wasn’t any exit once he was in.

Logic told him to go and get help, even though the teachers would try to stop him and Yukine would refuse to come, but now he was so close to the answers that he’d been chasing. They were just a step away.

Yato took a breath, steeling himself on the precipice with his wand drawn. With a prayer, he jumped.

 

~

 

The pipe which Yato had jumped into was more like a slide than an endless fall. Rather than the river of sewage he’d expected to land in, Yato landed on what felt like a forest floor when hard, stick-like objects jabbed into his back as he was hurled into a dingy crater.

Yato groaned with the effort of pushing himself up, wand miraculously still in hand and unbroken from the force of his landing. Yato squinted as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer lighting, looking down at the floor when his feet crunched loudly on what he thought were sticks, but instead saw a carpet of chalk-white ribcages and skulls of dozens, no, hundreds, of animals picked clean of their flesh.

He tried to ignore the thought that some of them may have been human, instead holding his wand out in front of him, listening as carefully as he could over the crunching of bones under his feet as he stepped through one of the openings of the disused piping.

It wasn’t long before he found his way through the tunnels with only his intuition, coming across a dead end much darker than the rest of the passages he’d taken.

Instinct proved to be right when he entered the cavern and found a door like none he’d ever seen. Bronze and circular, with the twisted bodies of snakes moulded into it with such detail that they looked as if they would come to life at any moment.

Yato traced the ridge of the door with his fingers, looking for a groove of some sort of handle that would let him in before he remembered his logic: If the Heir needed to be a parselmouth to control the Basilisk, why wouldn’t the Chamber also need to be opened with parseltongue?

This was the Chamber of Secrets.

“ _Abna_.” Yato repeated the word which had opened the entrance in the bathroom, not sure whether to be relieved or worried when the snakes slithered across the circumference of the door before its mechanisms clunked and the sealed door swung open.

His stomach dropped as he saw nothing but pitch blackness greeting him in the wide entrance. If the Basilisk were to strike when he was in there, he would be powerless.

“ _Lumos_.” Yato resolved himself, not giving a second thought to the risk he was taking.

He squinted through the darkness as he stepped through the door, a dim orb of light at the tip of his wand illuminating his face but hardly piercing the path before him. A consistent dripping told him he was close to water, as well as the damp chill that made the hairs on his bare arms stand on end. He lowered his wand in an attempt to see where he was going, sending reflections of himself shimmering into the puddles of muck that pooled on the floor.

 

Stalagmites and stalactites pushed up from the cavernous floor and from the peaked ceiling of the Chamber, no doubt the source of the sound he’d heard. The swish of his wand to the left illuminated a serpent head, its fanged mouth prepared to strike. Yato jumped back in surprise before he realised it was just a statue alongside many others of its kind which seemed to line the whole pathway.

Yato’s shuffled footsteps echoed in the quietness of the Chamber along with the occasional splash as he stepped in a puddle. Yato raised his wand once again, straining to see his surroundings as he flicked his wand to and fro to see if the looming shadows hid anything within them.

_Thump._

Yato’s foot connected with something soft on the ground, nearly tripping him. He stopped, giving it another kick. A whimper. Yato quickly swished his wand back towards the ground, finding a curled-up shape at his feet.

The person’s hands were grasping his scalp, bloody fingers ripping at his hair as his arms were clenched tight over his head to block out whatever had brought him into this state. Tears stained his cheeks in crisscross patterns, smeared with grime and swipes of blood. Breathing shallowly, his eyes rolled frantically below his eyelids, desperately looking for an escape.

Yukine.

Yato was on his knees and shaking his crumpled body faster than he could call out his name, wand discarded and the dim orb fading away. Yet after a few panicked seconds he realised the Chamber was still illuminated by a new source of light, one he hadn’t noticed being conjured.

A ball of light hung suspended in the air, revealing the grandeur of the Chamber which Yato had failed to see with his smaller spell.

A face had been carved into the wall, which would’ve greeted Yato had there been sufficient light when he entered. From the stern expression and the portraits he’d seen around the school – as well as belonging in this founder’s house – Yato knew it was the likeness of Salazar Slytherin.

The carving’s gaping mouth distorted the image of strictness, making it look like he was screaming as dribbles of water escaped and rippled on the surface of an otherwise stagnant pool of water below.

Distracted by this and trying to rouse Yukine again with a pleading voice, Yato didn’t notice the figure watching him from the far side of the room until his echoed footsteps approached them. Kugaha - no doubt the conjurer of the Optio spell judging by his lowered wand - smiled at him.

“Hello, Yaboku.”

Words failed Yato – not that Kugaha expected a response. He paced around Yato at a wide berth, hands clasped behind his back with a conceited smile.

“I must say, you’re quite persistent. You even found the Chamber of Secrets.” Kugaha’s voice was pleasant, as if they were discussing charms, not the revelation of a legend or acknowledging the deed that would follow it.

“You know that this Chamber was built to purge the school, of course,” Kugaha said, stopping a few paces away, “and only Salazar’s Heir can open it.”

“ _You’re_ the Heir?” Yato didn’t bother hiding the incredulousness in his exclamation, which was answered by a chuckle.

With an imperceptible shake of his head, Kugaha’s eyes had dropped to the still form Yato guarded. His eyes darted to the mess of blond hair before returning to Kugaha. Whatever he was insinuating clouded in Yato’s head when he noticed the malicious glint his eyes had taken.

_It made no sense…_

“Yukine? How is he the Heir if he’s not –” Yato started. Surely the Heir of Slytherin would be, well, a Slytherin.

“The diary chooses the Heir, Yaboku.”

 _Diary?_ Yato scowled. _What does a diary have to do with this?_

In answer to his unstated question, Kugaha reached his free hand into the folds of his robes; Yato inched his fingers toward his discarded wand.

“Do you know what this is?”

He held a black notebook up, something so ordinary but so familiar as if Yato had seen it somewhere before. Without answering, Kugaha continued his lecture.

“It’s a soul vessel.”

The phrase was foreign to Yato, but Kugaha’s explanation continued regardless of whether he wanted to hear it or not.

“Soul vessels can be linked to people, or other objects,” he said with an aloof airiness, resuming his pacing so that he was circling Yato and the still-unconscious Yukine. “It assimilates the life force of the person who uses it until it leaves nothing of them but a shell.”

His eyes lingered on Yukine, not noticing Yato’s hand now hooked around the hilt of his wand, out of sight. His grip tightened when Kugaha dropped the diary on Yukine’s chest like litter and took out another object which he then held up to the light.

“And stores that life in this.”

It was small enough to be held between his thumb and index finger, jewel-bright and crimson in colour, just like the drawings he’d seen in the dusty tomes stored in the restricted section of the library.

The Philosopher’s Stone.

“This isn’t what you think it is,” Kugaha said. “We have the stone, of course, but this is something new.”

Yato turned his attention back to Kugaha, noticing he clenched the stone in his fist before putting it in his pocket.

“Have you any idea what your father has been doing whilst you’ve been away?” The laziness with which he asked the question startled Yato.

_Father? What does he have to do with this?_

Kugaha smirked at Yato’s clouded face, apparently deciding not to divulge just what scheme he had been conspiring – the one Yato had been trying to uncover – instead turning his interest to another subject.

“Do you know what the best part of this diary is?” He gestured at the diary and bent down with a leering grin.

“I know all of Yukine’s secrets,” he whispered, “things that you could only dream of knowing.”

Yato frowned. _Secrets?_

“Do you even know him, Yaboku?”

 _I do…don’t I?_ Flashes of memories came to Yato, but he recalled nothing about Yukine’s family, or his home life, or even where he was from. He knew as much about Yukine as Yukine did about him – nothing.

“That mudblood girl he liked.” Kugaha had resumed his circling, voice scornful as if the very idea of a half-blood and a muggle together was enough to leave a bad taste in his mouth. “And the pureblood.”

Yato could only guess he meant Suzuha. Though his phrasing puzzled him, he couldn’t ask what he meant by ‘liked’ as Kugaha revelled in his taunting.

“As for his pathetic life,” Kugaha smirked, “well, that is quite a story. Would you like to know?”

He had stopped once more near the pool of water, waiting for an answer Yato didn’t give to him. The drips of water were more prominent now in the silence that drew out their stalemate.

Yato glanced once more at Yukine, who had stopped moving entirely. He didn’t want to entertain the thought of what would happen if he didn’t wake again, or that he might be too late to save him.

With wicked delight at Yato’s conflicted, shifting glance, Kugaha began to reveal the secrets which were now killing Yukine.

“He had a pureblood mother, of course, and a muggle father who never knew her true nature, not even when she was killed.”

 _Killed?_ This news caught Yato’s attention long enough for him to drop his guard, grip loosening on his wand as Kugaha continued.

“Not even her own filthy husband or their mongrel son knows what happened.” He gave a short laugh that reverberated in the Chamber before he twisted his head to the side with a sickening smile to see Yato’s stony expression.

“I don’t believe they even found a body. She just -” Kugaha made a motion with one hand that mimicked an explosion, and imaginary poof of smoke going up from his hand no doubt in the forefront of Kugaha’s mind as he delighted at Yato’s clenched jaw.

“You fucking–” Yato’s outraged cry stopped short. He was winding him up – he knew that – but he couldn’t stop it from getting to him, much to Kugaha’s enjoyment.

“The muggle stopped caring when he found other means of comfort and ways to release all that torment,” he said. “Of course, the boy protected himself without meaning to; he had power in him – reflexive, the same way you would flinch if someone would strike you – to defend himself when the father returned home in a frenzy.”

Yato’s glare had changed into a look of confusion. Nonverbal magic was advanced, though he’d heard stories of it being used as the result of extreme trauma.

“Muggles are fearful, of course. They persecuted us for our magic for centuries before we shut ourselves away so they could live their primitive lives, struggling to exist whilst we thrived.”

Kugaha’s voice had taken on a darker tone, one which was disgusted with the history of oppression they were still forced to endure. “The only thing any muggle would do with such a cursed child would be to lock it away until it stopped.”

He didn’t break eye contact with Yato when he asked him a question.

“Have you ever wondered why he’s so afraid of the dark?”

Now that he knew about Yukine’s childhood, the answer clicked into place the moment he asked, and Yato’s blood ran cold.

All those times Yukine had stayed behind over Christmas and Easter, vanishing and returning with dark shadows under his eyes even during the term. His avoidance of confinement and darkness. A father who feared the magic he had and shut him away for it – not emotionally, but physically. He could only imagine the childhood Yukine had, something which seemed horrifically tangible when Yato recalled his own.

“Tragic boy,” Kugaha drawled, “suffering so much and not even knowing that he is the cause of this school’s misery.”

At this comment, Yato realised the implications of Yukine being the Heir and his actions. He may have been under some sort of possession, but he was the reason Hiyori and Suzuha were petrified. He didn’t even realise it when he’d woken from the trance to find Suzuha’s body at his feet with seemingly no explanation to why he was there that night, or why he wasn’t affected.

“You have no right,” Yato said, his voice strained. Secrets – Yukine’s secrets – were not something that should’ve been said with such amusement, not unless he was the one telling them.

Kugaha snorted. “And what right do you have do you have now to defend him? You did nothing. You didn’t even care to find the Heir instead of the Chamber. What good have you done?”

He turned his back on Yato and crossed the room to the carving, splashed footsteps helping to conceal his indistinct muttering. Yato snatched up his wand and aimed it at his back, but Kugaha was faster, spinning and easily disarming him; his wand leapt from his hand into the shallow duct which ran along the Chamber’s entrance.

Yato hissed at the sparks that singed his hand. He had to get out, but not without Yukine.

“Master won’t be happy, but your silence is needed.” Kugaha didn’t bother turning to face Yato, instead reaching his hand out to the carving of Salazar Slytherin. The nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach told Yato that Kugaha was finishing his work, one way or another.

 _This is bad._ Yato could try and carry Yukine, but he wouldn’t make it out in time even if he knew where he was going.

As he turned his head to where he thought his wand had vanished to, a strange cry rang through the Chamber and Yato’s eyes were drawn upward.

A bird – no, something much more beautiful than that – was soaring overhead, its brilliant plumage ablaze with the hues of an inferno, contrasting the drabness of the Chamber against the intensity of the sun.

A phoenix.

Yato could only stare in silence as the bird circled around the Chamber and above Kugaha – who seemed to be likewise be at a loss for words with the unexpected arrival of the creature – before it swooped low and glided towards Yato. It clutched a large piece of tattered cloth in its talons and, as if on cue, dropped it into Yato’s lap with another cry before sailing away.

Yato lifted the object, examining it with a perplexed look that deepened once he realised what it was.

_The Sorting Hat?_

It was uncharacteristically silent for an object which always spoke to its listeners, though those listeners were mainly first-year students who were waiting to be sorted. Besides that, it had no other purpose.

Yato rose to his feet, trying to work out why a phoenix – he had no idea where it had come from – would bring him the Sorting Hat.

“Useless.” Yato’s head snapped back up to Kugaha, whose eyes were narrowed at the strange yet harmless object.

Once more he raised his hand to the carving, expression cracking with a triumphant grin when he bellowed words in a language that no one in the school but Yato could understand. Yato could only watch, a shocked and horrified expression on his face when the grating of scale on stone echoed from the cavity in the mouth of Salazar Slytherin – not a fountain like Yato had thought – from which Kugaha was summoning the Basilisk.

Yato looked away before its eyes could pierce the darkness of the tunnel, knowing that if he even stole a glance to see if it were coming for him he would die instantly. Instead, he did the only thing he could do – flee.

His feet pelted the ground hard and fast, matching the ragged breaths which scorched his lungs as he pelted towards the entrance before his foot caught on the uneven flagstones, sending him crashing to the ground. The sound of the Basilisk’s hiss and movements paralysed him without even seeing its eyes.

_I’m going to die._

Yato ducked his head and used his arms to shield himself, body curled and prepared for a killing blow which never arrived. A spectacular cry rang out, freezing the air.

The phoenix – having found some other way through the Chamber – dove from the ceiling straight towards the Basilisk's head, which was twisting to find the source of the cry.

The agonised roar of the Basilisk now joined the phoenix's screeching as the bird gouged its talons into the Basilisk's eyes.

Yato cautiously raised his head from the folds of his robes, eyes trailing from the floor to give a fleeting glance to the shadows where he could see the Basilisk’s form grotesquely illuminated.

The Basilisk's continued shrieks drowned out Kugaha's enraged screams as its tail lashed wildly, smashing against the walls and shattering the statues of the serpents which lined the corridor.

The Basilisk’s writhing body came into view next and Yato’s chest tightened as he realised he’d never actually seen the creature before. The rippling scales created a thick armour the same colour as poison ivy, needle-sharp spikes trailing from its neck down its back which still reeled wildly as it fought the phoenix.

He was too slow to look away. Yato saw the Basilisk's head drop to the ground with a jarring screech, and noticed that the phoenix had come back for a reason. The Basilisk’s eyes, once so deadly, now wept with blood.

_It’s blinded._

Blood splattered across the floor, flicked across the walls, and pooled by its head as the Basilisk groaned, giving Yato the chance to scramble to his feet and race back to Yukine’s side. Kugaha still stood over him, moving his scathing glare from the phoenix – now soaring out of sight once more – to Yato as he tried to heave Yukine up in an attempt to carry him out of the Chamber.

“The Basilisk may be blinded, but it can still hear you!”

Kugaha’s voice had risen in pitch. He had grown hysterical in his desire for this fight to be over, and was desperate to finish his work.

As if on cue the grating resumed and, with a frantic glance, Yato saw the Basilisk rising and lifting its head, ears attuned to hunting its prey now locking onto Yato’s position when grunts from lifting Yukine’s dead weight escaped his mouth.

Although he was now able to watch the creature and evade it, Yato was forced to stop moving as the Basilisk turned its attention to him and inched closer with every movement.

_What do I do?!_

The question repeated itself in Yato’s head as he stared at the Basilisk, mouth dry and his hands starting to shake from the pure fear which coursed through him. Meanwhile, Yukine slumped in his arms and showed no signs of waking up soon.

A glittering by his feet caught Yato’s eye. The Sorting Hat, still crumpled on the floor, shimmered for a few seconds as piece by piece an object materialised in the depths of the folds. It shone with a strange light before it faded and revealed the shape of the weapon which it had left behind. Inlaid with silver and egg-sized rubies at the hilt, Yato could distinctly see the blade hidden within the Sorting Hat - a sword.

Yato let Yukine crumple once more with a thud, silently apologising as he dived for the hilt and picked up the sword.

Kugaha growled and moved forward as if to snatch the sword from his hands before Yato turned on him, pointing the sword at him in warning. Kugaha paused, a murderous glare on his face which was quickly replaced with a smirk as he turned his eyes back to the Basilisk bearing down upon them. He was going enjoy this fight.

Yato’s eyes flickered between Kugaha and the Basilisk, and when he realised that the latter was nearly upon him, he took a few steps back.

The Basilisk was much too tall for him to fight; he’d have to be running straight into its jaws to be able to land a blow that could kill it. He tried to think of something, anything, he could do increase his odds of winning as he was forced backward into the shallow pool of water beneath the carving. The Basilisk's head twitched with hunger as it detected every splash of his footsteps.

The carving….

Yato took a quick look over his shoulder, seeing the grooves of Salazar’s sculpted hair sticking out like steps all over the wall. His eyes alighted on the slopes that snaked out before flattening out on the brow of the sculpture’s austere expression.

Jerking his head back to his target and, with both hands gripping the hilt of the sword as he steeled himself, Yato raised the sword high above his head and brought it down on the Basilisk’s lowered snout with a battle cry that tore through his throat.

It recoiled and sprayed saliva with the viciousness of its scream, striking the ground where Yato had stood with a sickening crunch of bone on concrete, but its target was already sprinting towards the far side of the Chamber and clambering up the sloped stone for a vantage point.

The sword scraped against stone as he stumbled, carefully but quickly making his way to the flat ledge which gave him a view over the Chamber.

The Basilisk had thrashed itself into the water beneath his vantage point, tail whipping the ground and sending surges of water through the Chamber as it tried to land a hit on him before backing off with a hiss when it realised its target wasn't there.

Yato could see that Kugaha had moved out of the way, watching with his arms folded and a sour expression on his face. However, Yukine remained in the same spot, fading fast and at the mercy of the Basilisk should it crush him before the stone could kill him - it was a miracle he hadn't been already. Yato felt a stab of worry. Every minute he wasted was another minute closer to Yukine’s – and maybe his own – death.

Clamping his hands on the hilt once more with a white-knuckled grip, Yato’s shouted parseltongue turned into an illegible cry with the roughness of his haggard voice, yet it still caught the attention of the Basilisk - it reared its head, then its body, to Yato’s level.

Its bloody eye sockets pointed right at him, matching the wide gash on its snout which had made the two nostrils become one and dripped with thick blood. Its mouth opened in a smile-like grimace, fangs bared like a python testing the air and ready to strike.

Yato was the first to attack, nearly losing his footing on the precipice as the Basilisk’s agonised and enraged shriek rattled his ears when he drew back, his blade slick with fresh blood as the Basilisk rushed toward him for another strike.

He teetered as close to the edge as he dared as the Basilisk sought him out, sense of smell impaired by the bloody gash Yato had given it as well as the new one which had sliced its right eye socket open.

Yato's hands shook as he tried - and failed - to keep the sword steady when the Basilisk rasped over the ledge, trying to find him with touch rather than sound or smell - it would make for a quicker death if it could catch him in its jaws.

He didn’t realise this until it was almost too late. It nudged its head closer to him; Yato threw himself to the ground as the Basilisk’s head passed over him. He rolled over quickly and staggered to his feet, arms heavy when he lifted the sword again. It made a tell-tale scrape which snatched the Basilisk’s attention again, but it was too slow to avoid his strike to its scaly armour this time.

The Basilisk’s mouth opened wide with a scream, the gaping jaws level with Yato when at last he found an opportunity quite literally staring him in the face.

His body moved on its own: he planted one hand on the Basilisk’s snout, the other wielded the sword with the last of his strength, and he thrust his arm into the Basilisk’s jaws, spearing it straight through the roof of its mouth.

An ear-splitting, unearthly sound emitted from the Basilisk; its cotton candy-pink mouth and the pitch blackness of its throat seemed to swallow all of Yato’s thoughts, except for the one that reminded him that he was killing a living animal.

The sudden nausea he felt as its scream began to die snapped Yato back into reality, and with difficulty he pulled the sword from the bone and flesh. He was too hasty in trying to finish the fight and his movements forced an arm onto one of the sharp fangs of its lower jaw.

Searing pain scorched through Yato, forcing to him drop the sword and tear his arm from the tooth, but it had lodged firmly in his flesh. He clutched his arm and stifled a cry, watching the sword fall into the pool of water below. Then, as if in slow motion, Yato looked back up to the face of the Basilisk. He couldn't tell if it was dead by looking at the holes where its eyes had been, but its slumping and twisting and the thunderous reverberation of its body hitting the ground below was enough of an indication.

Yato dry-heaved, swallowing the pain as best as he could. He could see Kugaha’s disappointed face staring at the body of the Basilisk with a woefulness reminiscent of the way someone would look upon a deceased pet. He looked up at Yato, and Yato stared back. He wanted to speak but the words would not come. The corners of his vision blurred around the edges, spots of darkness crowding his sight every time he blinked. His fight was now against the urge to keel over right then and there when he noticed the fang embedded in his arm.

 _Basilisk venom…_ Yato remembered learning that Basilisk venom could kill in a matter of minutes. He ripped the tooth from his arm with a muffled whimper, bowing his head and blinking furiously as he made his way back down to the Chamber floor with the fang in hand.

Kugaha’s figure blurred. Yato’s hearing was muffled, but he thought he could hear Kugaha’s voice reaching out to him, speaking unintelligibly before silence filled the Chamber. But he couldn't focus on it because the only thing he could think of was the reason he had come to the Chamber – to save Yukine.

Yato fell to his knees beside him, just able to make out Yukine’s shape, but he wasn’t moving.

_Why isn’t he moving?_

Through the haze of heat rushing to his head and obscuring his thoughts, his hands groped around Yukine, looking for the thing that had been causing his misery. After some seconds his hand brushed against the damp pages of a book which had slipped off of Yukine’s chest.

Although he could barely move his injured arm now as venom spread up his shoulder, Yato gripped the Basilisk fang and tried to steady his breaths.

If the venom could kill him, it could kill this thing too.

The last thing Yato saw was his hand – bloody and shaking – using the Basilisk fang to stab the black leather of the notebook with as much force as he could muster. Perhaps this was a hallucination that the Basilisk venom brought, but he thought he saw a plume of foul smoke which burst from the diary and enveloped him in a dark embrace, welcoming him into a black void of unconsciousness.

One word echoed through the fog, one word that pierced Yato every time he heard it.

_Yaboku…._

**Author's Note:**

> As you can see I’ve deviated a bit from the purpose of the diary and the Philosophers Stone, though technically it isn’t the original stone. I kinda went a bit Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood with how the Stone will be used in the future.
> 
> I like to refer to Yukine as ‘Chamberkine’ in this chapter. Gedid? Cos Boxkine is when Yukine got sealed in that little box in the manga? I’ll see myself out.
> 
> I was going to publish this on December 6th to mark the one year anniversary of Boxkine but y’know.
> 
> I’m taking a week’s break from updating as life is kicking my ass and I need to wrap up the arc properly, but there will be an update on my In The Darkness: Trivia series.
> 
> Accompanying art by Ina - http://leopah.tumblr.com/post/168124224273/have-you-ever-wondered-why-hes-so-afraid-of-the  
> Accompanying art by Maddie - http://ikis.tumblr.com/post/167721921125/happy-birth-yatorihell-your-present-is-an


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